Obama, the Debt Deal, and Leadership
By TDS offers some analysis on Obama’s failures in decision-making during the run-in and eventual capitulation in the manufactured debt ceiling “crisis” from December 2010 to its end. The analysis gets it right and wrong at once; correct when pointing out that voters “want two things from the occupant of the Oval Office–a core of convictions they can understand and the strength to fight for them” (though I disagree that this determines re-election success), yet wrong when it continually offers thinly veiled critiques about “the bright-line contrast between the parties so beloved of political consultants” and “the kind of advice that senior political advisors and their wannabes love to offer.”
Obama’s continual failure is a lack of clear leadership, convictions, and the will to fight for the same. These traits characterize each of his major legislative battles. I’m not whining, as a progressive, that Obama has failed to live up to my expectations as an arch-liberal or the second coming of FDR. I went on record on BBC radio back in late October, November of 2008 and January 2009 that progressives with unreasonably naive expectations in the US would be disappointed in this president as he always was politically moderate, campaigned as a moderate, and would govern as a moderate. Ideologically, this is the presidency that I (and I think I can speak for all of us here on LGM) expected.
However, I didn’t expect the lack of a clearly (and simply) articulated agenda, convictions, or leadership. I’d suggest that if these traits existed, tactical political manoeuvring is critical to success when used in support of the over-arching agenda. What we have is an administration that has this backwards: this administration’s agenda is defined by micro-level tactics, which absent a macro-level agenda, appears sloppy and amateur.
It somehow worked for Bill Clinton, but he had an inimitable ability to connect with the electorate.
Finally, the TDS article closes with “Obama has 15 months left to convince the people that he is that kind of president. The odds are getting longer, and the time is getting shorter.” As a political scientist, I’ll argue that Obama only really has 9 to 12 months to convince the electorate, and he is not helped by today’s economic news, which isn’t good.
